Dear Angie,

April 6-12 is the week of the young child. This is an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The purpose of the Week of the Young Child is to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs/services that meet those needs.

MUSIC MONDAY

Today is all about music & movement!! Each classroom will find the beat to connect music, movement, and math. Practice clapping, drumming, or stomping to the beat of the music while counting.

TASTY TUESDAY

Did you know that cooking together connects math with literacy skills, science, and more? On Tasty Tuesday, we’ll be cooking up a storm!!

WORK TOGETHER WEDNESDAY!

When children build together, they explore math and science concepts and develop their social and early literacy skills. Children can use any building material—from a fort of branches on the playground to a block city in the classroom, or a hideaway made from couch pillows at home.

ARTSY THURSDAY

Children develop creativity, social skills, and fine motor skills with open-ended art projects where they can make choices, use their imaginations and create with their hands. On Artsy Thursday celebrate the joy and learning children experience when engaged in creative art making. Use any materials—from crayons to paint, clay to crafts!

FAMILY FRIDAY

Bring in a photo of something your family did over the week to celebrate week of the young child… from cooking together, playing outside, or reading together. Feel free to send pictures through Daily Connect.

CENTER HAPPENINGS

The Lions Club will be here on Friday, April 12, at 9:00 a.m. to provide vision screening for children 6 months and older. This service is offered free of charge. Consent forms with more information will be available on the parent table. We are excited to provide this opportunity for our families.

TEACHER APPRECIATION LUNCHEON

We would like to honor your child’s teachers with a special pot-luck lunch on Thursday, April 25. This is a special lunch where we ask parents to contribute a food item for a staff lunch. There will be a sign- up sheet on the parent table if you would like to participate. Feel free to drop off your food or beverage item in the morning. The teachers look forward to this event and greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

SOCCER

We are looking forward to offering a soccer class once again through Rev Sports for our preschool children. I am in the process of working with Rev Sports to determine a class day and time. I will pass along any soccer information as soon as it is available.

ESPECIALLY FOR PARENTS

I have a confession to make…I don’t always enjoy playing with my kids. I know that makes me sound like a terrible parent, so let me explain (and try to defend myself a little!). Play is important for kids – more than important, play is essential. Knowing that, I seek out as many opportunities as possible for my kids to play. But when they ask me to play with them, I sometimes bristle. Imaginative play, such as playing make believe, just doesn’t do it for me. I struggle getting into “character” and if I am honest, I find the whole thing just a little dull. Phew, it feels good to confess!

But just because I don’t like a certain type of play doesn’t mean that I write off the importance of play altogether. As much as we have all read the research on the important role play has in early childhood development, we may not be as aware of the fact that play is critical for us as adults too. Even for adults, play has some serious benefits: it encourages creativity, releases endorphins, and improves brain function. Play reduces stress and promotes joy. And we could all use a little less stress and a little more joy.

The good news (for me and hopefully for you) is that there are many different ways to play. So if you, like me, don’t exactly love sitting down to a tea party, rest assured that there are many ways to engage in play with your children that are fun for you and for them. Brené Brown, professor and nationally recognized author, writes that play has three key elements:

It’s time spent without purpose
It’s something you don’t want to end
It leads to a loss of self-consciousness.[1]

By those metrics, there are a myriad of ways that we as adults can embrace play in our lives. Make believe is only one type of play, but (thankfully) there is the rough-and-tumble play of sports, the ritual play of games like chess, the body play of hiking or yoga, and the object play of building legos or making a fort.[2] In all of these types of play we can get lost in the moment with our children and embrace the joy of play as simply that – something done joyfully and without and end in mind. So get out there and find your favorite way to play.

[1] https://www.shortform.com/blog/brene-brown-creativity/

[2] https://wanderlust.com/journal/the-importance-of-play-in-adulthood/